


In My Bones There's Dignity

by FantasyBoudicca



Series: The Hand We're Dealt [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, Footbinding, Gen, I am AWFUL at titles, Worldbuilding, no edits we post our first drafts like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 00:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16465139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FantasyBoudicca/pseuds/FantasyBoudicca
Summary: Nimue came to Vesuvia with nothing but a single bag and the clothes on her back.Prequel to Webs.





	In My Bones There's Dignity

She’d rejected another man. What a scandal. Nimue kept her eyes on her spinning, ignoring the whispers.

 _Her family isn’t that rich either_. They weren’t poor – her spinning and weaving, particularly the enchanted work, was too valuable for that – but a marriage to the rich farmer would have meant a fat bride price given to her parents, money they could put to use for Nimue’s younger brothers and sisters.

Nimue was as dutiful as any good daughter, and there was little she would not do for her siblings, but becoming the fourth wife of a man thrice her age... she would go mad. She had never been good with people, couldn’t imagine marrying and dealing with three sister-wives and their children.

“Let me go to Vesuvia. I hear the Count of Vesuvia has banned all male migrants, so they’ll need women workers instead,” Nimue said to her parents one night. That she would send money back went unspoken.

Her father frowned. “It’s far.”

Her mother sighed. “Are you sure you want to do this? We don’t mind having you at home.”

Lies. Part of them did mind. They needed the money, and Nimue was fast passing ideal marriage age. She knew this like she knew that her brother Guiret had a mind like a tiger’s claws, and just needed a chance to claw his way to the top through the civil service examinations, just needed the chance to attend school and study rather than help their father in the fields. And little three-year-old Lillian, docile and sweet as a kitten, was meant for better things than being the wife of a peasant spice farmer.

As the eldest, Nimue had always known what her role would be. “I’m sure.”

Her father must have seen the conviction in her eyes. He nodded. “Tomorrow, we will go into town and find one of the water guests. They’ll take you to Vesuvia and help you find work.”

“Thank you, _ba ba_ ,” Nimue bowed her head in acknowledgement.

Her mother watched them, lips pressed into a thin line. Suddenly she turned to Nimue’s father. “Tomorrow, you will take my wedding gown and sell it. To pay the water guest, immediately.”

“ _lou por_ ,” he began, but she cut him off with a sharp look. “If my first baby is going to Vesuvia, she will not arrive with a year’s worth of debt!”

“ _ma mi_ ,” Nimue said, and her mother’s eyes softened instantly. “That gown was meant for you to wear, child. But if you will not marry, then better it be sold for your benefit than be wasted.”

Nimue hadn’t even thought of it. But it made sense. Most women migrants took a vow not to marry; they needed the absolute control of their finances, needed to be able to focus on just sending money home. And so she nodded.

-

“ _dai ze_ has to go away for some time,” Nimue told Lillian a few days later, as they worked at their spinning wheels.

Lillian looked over at Nimue with huge eyes, tiny hands as sure as those of a girl four times her age as they coaxed the cotton from the bundle in her lap. “You’re getting married? But you’ll come back, right?”

Nimue shook her head. “No. I’m going to work, in Vesuvia. I’ll be gone for a long time. But I’ll come back to visit when I can, and I’ll write.”

“But you can’t write. You don’t know how to.” This brought an involuntary grimace. _If I can help it, you’ll learn how to, Lillian,_ Nimue swore.

She forced a smile a second later. “Then I’ll pay someone to write for me. And _you’ll_ have to learn to read, so you can read my letters to you.”

Lillian was silent, clearly thinking. Nimue went back to her work for the moment.

“Can I come with you?”

Horror rose up sharply in her just at the thought, recalling all the stories of girls who had gone to work overseas – drugs and disease and exploitation. Lillian’s feet weren’t bound – that meant she could be used for manual labour, more sure-footed than Nimue would ever be. “No. It’s not safe,” she said sharply.

“Then why are _you_ going?” Lillian demanded, small face scrunching into a scowl. Nimue took a deep breath. “I’m grown up, it’s safe for me,” she answered, lying through her teeth, and, more honestly, “And I’m the oldest. It’s my job to help take care of you and Guiret.”

“Then what do _I_ do?” Now she was pouting, lip trembling. Nimue bit back her sharp “Stay home”, forcing herself to soften, to temper her anxiety and sharp tongue into something gentler for Lillian. _What can she do?_

“Listen to _ma mi_ and _ba ba_ , and study hard,” Nimue finally said.

 _Gods, let that be enough for her_.

-

The ship was crowded. Nimue slept shoulder to shoulder with about twenty other girls in hammocks below deck, her one bag clutched tightly to her chest.

Most of them were going to work in construction or as labourers on the docks, tanned, strong girls with broad shoulders and rough hands. Nimue’s soft hands and bound feet marked her as a witch, to be kept at home to produce enchanted textiles and medicines, forced to develop her magic to compensate for her physical disadvantage. The mental endurance to survive the process of footbinding and learn to live with it afterwards tended to lend itself well to magic, supposedly.

Below decks, she healed cuts, shared simple potion recipes, cured seasickness and laid infertility curses as requested. In return, she always had a hand or shoulder to grasp against the roiling of the ship, promises of a place among them when they got to Vesuvia. It distracted them from the anxiety of the journey and the reality that in all likelihood, they would never see their homeland and families again.

Nimue arrived in Vesuvia with nothing but a single bag and the clothes on her back.

She shared a room with three other girls, migrants like her who had come in search of work. Eleni worked on the docks, loading and unloading cargo. Haimo and Eres were construction workers. They rose before dawn to prepare their main meal for the day – usually bread and mussels, fish, whatever was the cheapest at the market that day. Eleni would then walk to the docks, Haimo, Eres, and Nimue to the heart of the Flooded District to find what work they could, Haimo and Eres’ red headscarves and Nimue’s bound feet signalling what work they could be hired for.

Nimue arrived in Vesuvia with nothing but a single bag and the clothes on her back, and the way she lived, she suspected she would die with nothing but a single bag and the clothes on her back.

-

Years passed. The money she sent back with her letters went to Guiret’s education, to help build a dowry for Lillian and money for a bride price for Guiret, to buy Lillian a new pair of shoes.

_I’m going to school. Lillian says she misses you._

_Ba ba and ma mi think they have enough money for Lillian to go to school as well._

_When are you coming back?_

_I can read Guiret’s textbooks now._

_I’m studying hard. It’s so easy, you just need to think a little._

_I passed the first round of exams, after_ four years _of studying. Ma mi and ba ba are so proud. They told me to say thank you._

_I miss you. I understand why you left, but I miss you._

_I’m taking the Officials Academy entrance exams now. If I do well, we get grain and pay and I get a spot in the Academy._

_Guiret’s got a crush on a girl! I’m helping him keep it secret, but you’re safe._

_I got accepted into the Official’s Academy. Gods, you were right. I just needed the chance. Thank you._

_Guiret’s in the Official’s Academy now. Can’t you come home?_

_The exams are so damn easy, I feel like I’m being pranked._

_-_

_Lorelei wants to go to Vesuvia._

Nimue snorted as Haimo Reathe’s son read the letter out loud for her. “An official’s daughter, coming to Vesuvia? What for?”

“She says, ‘Lorelei wants to study other types of magic, and she wants to meet her aunt’.” That stilled Nimue. She considered the shophouse, the single bedroom at the back. What changes would she have to make? _Pah, I spent ten years living with three other girls. She’ll live._

 _Well, if I’m already considering that…_ “Tell my sister to send her girl here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Points to whoever recognises which specific historical narratives I'm referencing, though I admittedly REALLY wasn't subtle about it.


End file.
